Bolivian doctors demand lockdown as COVID surge threatens health service 'collapse'

FILE PHOTO: Medical workers hold a sign that reads "The life of Bolivians is priceless" as they attend a protest demanding the authorities for a rigid quarantine, amid the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) outbreak, in La Paz, Bolivia January 27, 2021. REUTERS/David Mercado/File Photo

Bolivian doctors are demanding a nationwide lockdown and threatening to stop taking in new patients as a surge in COVID-19 cases, which they say is killing an average of one medic per day, strains hospitals to breaking point.

New daily coronavirus infections in the Andean country, which received its first batch of Russian Sputnik V vaccines on Thursday, hit a single-day record of 2,866 this week and deaths attributed to the epidemic climbed above 10,000.

FILE PHOTO: Photographs of doctors and health workers of the Hospital Caja Petrolera who died during the outbreak of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) are seen during a protest as health workers are demanding the authorities for a rigid quarantine in La Paz, Bolivia, January 27, 2021. REUTERS/David Mercado/File Photo

"At the rate we are going, there will be a total collapse," said Ricardo Landivar, a director of the La Paz Medical College. "... We are going to have patients dying in the streets without being able to be treated by medical staff."

Health workers' and doctors' unions are demanding that leftist President Luis Arce return to lockdown until the current COVID wave - Bolivia's second - passes.

But the government has been reluctant to further undermine the landlocked country's already reeling economy.

FILE PHOTO: Medical workers attend a protest demanding the authorities for a rigid quarantine, amid the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) outbreak, in La Paz, Bolivia January 27, 2021. REUTERS/David Mercado/File Photo

Arce, due to be one of the first in the country to get inoculated with Sputnik V, has said the arrival of the Russian vaccine can help Bolivians "breathe a bit easier".

Medical union leaders however point to the high fatality rate - confirmed COVID cases in the nation of 11.5 million stand at around 210,000 - and say that every day more than one doctor or health worker loses their life.

In cities, hospitals are often visibly crowded inside and out, with signs on doors and walls warning: "no room for new patients" and "the emergency units have collapsed".

"Doctors are dying day by day," said Patricia Almanza, a doctor at the Hospital Petrolero in La Paz.

"The previous week seven doctors died, yesterday another doctor died and today another... and the government does not want to order a quarantine not even for fifteen days... because it is more interested in the economy."

Bolivia's government has agreements for a combined 15 million doses of Sputnik V, the AstraZeneca/Oxford vaccine and others via the international COVAX mechanism co-managed by the World Health Organization.

It will start vaccinations of frontline workers with the first 20,000 doses of Sputnik V.

(Reporting by Monica Machicao in La Paz; Editing by Adam Jourdan and John Stonestreet)